The Raspberry Pi Foundation is making a new camera board that will let users build their own cameras to take high quality photos. It’s called High Quality Camera and it comes with a 12.3 megapixel Sony IMX477 sensor, and supports C and CS mount lenses. Oh, and it only costs $50.
The High Quality Camera will improve image quality over the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s previous camera board, which relied on smaller resolution sensors and used fixed focus-lenses. The C and CS mounts will let the High Quality Camera use a wide range of existing lenses, including Cannon’s various lenses, giving the user a lot of control over the image quality. Price conscious enthusiasts can get started with a Raspberry Pi branded $25 6mm CS-mount lens or a $50 16mm C-mount lens.
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Raspberry Pi’s camera boards are about the size of a credit card and can turn into a wide variety of machines. You can turn them into a digital camera for personal use and load them down with fancy lenses, sure, but users have also turned them into doorbell cameras, underwater wildlife monitors, in-home security cameras, and stop motion animation machines.
Along with the High Quality Camera, Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a PDF with instructions on how to use its board to build many of these devices. It’s free if you download it, and $12.50 if you want a print copy.
